The levels we played were quite varied. Players will navigate a globe, littered with icons that represent where each level was created. Already, we saw a map that featured dozens of levels — an overwhelming amount of content has already been crafted during the game’s painfully long development. The adventure mode is where the game will teach players the essentials of LittleBigPlanet: each level will demonstrate the possibilities of the game’s incredible engine. Massive mechanical beasts, complex physics-based puzzles, and a number of fun playable gizmos can be found within each level. At the completion of these levels, players will unlock more and more things to use in their own creations.

We were surprised by how challenging each level can be. One level had us being chased by a contraption that threatened to steamroll us into oblivion. If the obstacles placed in front of us weren’t enough of a hindrance, the creature shot out fiery balls of charcoal at the characters — a single touch would char them to death. Yes, your critters can die — and they’ll die quite often!

Thankfully, death isn’t too menacing in the game. Scattered through each level are respawn doors, which will burst open with a brand new copy of your fallen friend. The object of the game is to collect as many point orbs as possible, and the punishment for death is simply lost time. There are a number of ways to die in the levels we played: if it wasn’t being burned alive, it was being crushed by a giant, rolling boulder. If not that, it was because we trailed behind the others, and the camera had already moved on without us. In these situations, a timer appears around an icon representing your character. If you don’t return to the gameplay screen in time, your character will respawn at the next available respawning point.

It was a pleasant surprise to see how challenging, yet still accessible, the designed levels of LittleBigPlanet are. While we all wait patiently for the creation tools to become readily available, it’s clear that the team at Media Molecule is trying to create as much original content as possible before shipping the game. Rest assured, it seems like the final retail product will be a rather substantial single and multiplayer offering — even for those uninterested in creating and sharing their own levels. The limited amount of time we had with LittleBigPlanet has us begging for more. Let’s hope a beta or demo comes to satiate us soon.

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The latest build picks up where the Tokyo Game Show build left off, demonstrating improvements to all areas of the game. According to technical director Alex Evans, when he looks at the game however, all he can see these days is things to do, things to refine and things to fix. Maybe that’s fair enough then; with a delay now official (don’t expect to be playing this until October), Alex’s small team can focus on refining the controls, interface and physics engine even further.

Alex was on hand with two of his teammates, demonstrating the versatility of the construction tools and physics engines. Objects were generated on the fly, customised, rotated, coloured in, tweaked, launched, placed, linked together, stacked, compressed and toyed with. And, delightfully, everything worked together in harmonious simulated physics. Watching the throngs of hardcore gamers, eyes glued to the screens we were playing on spoke volumes of the appeal and quality of this game.

Sack-boy is back; the now-iconic figure was joined by three other players all working their way across a lush, iconic stony field, full of obstacles to be overcome. Piles of beanbags, boulders, walls, tennis balls, hinges, pulleys, hanging ornaments like stone crescent moons and many others dotted the path forward as we got used to the controls – which are fundamentally the same as they have been in the past. This time, however, activating the jetpack and flying upwards felt much more accurate and solid; just a tad less floaty with better response to our turns and banks.

Teamwork still reign on levels like this. Three players grappled with a large weighted stone, needed to lift a massive teetering block that prevented passage. With two, the stone barely moves; with three, progress is slow but steady. With four, the weight is divided further and the group can pull the object along (and through the air) with ease.

At its most simplistic, this is the most flexible and open-ended sandbox game of this generation. It hails back to The Incredible Machine on PCs – a game that took the same DIY mentality to gamers back in the mid-90s. However, the promise of being able to upload, download and display your creations – be them fully-fledged levels, obstacle courses, Rube Goldberg machines, deathtraps or just fun levels to fool around in – just makes us more excited. Surely, as Sony has been touting, LittleBigPlanet will foster a community of eager designers.

There’s a feeling out there that LittleBigPlanet is a return to gameplay that will inspire creativity, rather than simply force-feeding pre-made levels. It’s this creativity that will sell the game to many. However, there are a full 50 maps of increasing size and complexity (with pits of fire, towering mounds and winding passages) planned for the final game, designed with meticulous attention to physics and more importantly, fun. The Sack-boys will reign.

While none of this is particularly new from the team, the demonstration did show exactly how refined the game already is. Visually, the engine now sports even more subtle depth-of-field effects, soft light blooming, lovely fabric ruffles, clouds of volumetric smoke and animation that strictly adhere’s to Newton’s laws. More than that, however, the framerate is now locked in somewhere between 30 frames per second and buttery. It’s got the trademark quality of a triple-A game and we can’t help but expect great things come October.

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No further details were offered as to how the game will work on the PSP, but if true, we’d expect the portable edition to feature link up options with the PS3 version, set for release in September.

We could see scope for transferable levels, or a level editor on the PSP that would allow you to keep working on your creations even when away from the PS3.

We could also imagine the relatively basic 2D gameplay of the console version working well on the portable, although it would be interesting to see how the physics mechanics would convert. If the impressive bendy physics in games like Loco Roco are anything to go by, it could work pretty well.

Sony UK was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

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The demo we saw started at the menu for LittleBigStory, which zooms in to the LittleBigPlanet itself (shown as a globe with sewn on patches of land and sea) where a series of clickable circles represent different levels. In this case, they were generically titled 1, 2, 3, CES, CES, and SeaSide, and we’ve been told these levels will come with the game, bar the CES ones anyhow. Exiting this menu and clicking My Levels takes you to a smaller planet in space with more clickable slots, as you might have guessed, here is where you select one to create your own level. From this point, you’re dropped into a blank level with walls, floor and a basic colour backdrop. Before you get started on your virtual canvas though, you can customise Sackboy, LittleBigPlanet’s main character. It was here we learned that the characters of the game have their own emotions that can be controlled by you; moving and shaking the controller moves Sackboy’s head, and tapping up and down on the D-pad makes him happier and sadder respectively, with displays of smiling, peace signs, to lowering his head and dropping his eyes to display how he is feeling. But anyway, as for customising your character, the options are near limitless. It begins with choosing material, what the character is made of (with all sorts of patterns such as leaves and polka dots), then the head which can be given no end of adjustments (moustache, eyes, shades, an Evil Knievel-style helmet, bunny ears, devil horns, pumpkin heads… you get the idea). Finally is the body which can have accessories added to it, ranging from different tops to gold dollar signs, just for the gangstas.

Once that’s done you can start building. To try and adequately describe how much variety is presented to the hands of the player would be a pointless task, so we won’t bother with that. The items you can place on the map range from simple shapes to more complicated ones, but with the tools at your disposal there’s literally a limitless amount of things you can create. Once some shapes have been placed, it’s up to you to decide what to make of them – for example purposes only, you could create steps leading up to a platform that grows in height. The observant of you will surely be wondering how you can create such a diverse playground out of the shapes available. Well, even though there are a lot of tailor made ones to cater for the majority of the things you’ll be building at the start of the game (without prior knowledge, that is), it’s when you use the cutting tool that you really understand how long this game will last. Let us explain: imagine you’ve placed a large cube of wood on the ground, and you want to make it L-shaped for whatever reason. Well, you can select the cutting tool and choose a square, then adjust it to the right size and place it on the top right-hand corner of the cube of wood. By doing this, the game’s engine removes that section of the cube. Now that’s clever!

It’s this, the physics engine, which makes LittleBigPlanet so realistic. Don’t choke at the thought, we know the characters are made from used potato sacks but watch one of the gameplay trailers and tell us you don’t think it seems realistic… we won’t open our inboxes because it just won’t happen! Clothes wave effortlessly in the wind, objects bounce and react as they really would, and heavier objects fall to the ground much more quickly than lighter ones. This is immediately evident in the game and probably one of the first things you’ll notice. Because we like putting things in context, we’ve seen a bridge made of rope and wooden blocks for steps, and as characters or objects are on them, the gravitational force causes it to sway from side to side according to where the pressure is… sweet!

Physics can be applied to everything you do in LittleBigPlanet as well. TGS footage has shown us characters grabbing on to a windmill and waiting for it to turn a few times at great speed, before jumping, which sent the characters flying high into the air and bouncing as they landed. Another thing displayed at TGS which has made us anticipate the game even more was a skateboard. Yes, we know, we’re easily pleased. But wait! One of the characters broke down a nearby wooden gate then grabbed the front of the deck and started moving forward, before hopping on for a ride. This sent the skateboard down a steep slope gaining momentum (and displaying clothes flapping in the wind as we mentioned) and flying up a ramp, which caused it to jump a gap to the other side. It fell over and landed on the characters, but never mind, anti-videogame types, they weren’t hurt.

LittleBigPlanet spurs far from the single-player side of it however. The four-player co-op mode is obviously going to keep gamers on their toes when they’re tired of playing it on their own (if that’s even possible) and while details are scarce at the moment, we know you can collect coloured orbs in hard-to-reach places which unlock extra items for you to use for building. That said, the place the game will come into its own online will be through user-created content. When you’ve built your own levels offline you can upload them and watch as others download them, and the cool thing is you can even set criteria for completing your levels, and in doing so, you can award those players prizes of items you’ve already created. The catch is they can’t give them away which is good because if you’ve created something worth giving away, you won’t want to never see it again.

Overall, LittleBigPlanet is the game we’ve always wanted to play. Media Molecule has impressed us no end with the physics engine and level of variation on offer, and that’s not a typical ending line for a preview… we actually mean it! We’re daunted, to be honest, but in a good way, because there’s still a considerable amount of development time remaining, and LittleBigPlanet is already huge at its current stage, which is quite fitting if you think about it. Come on Media Molecule, show us what you can do and create the system seller this is unquestionably destined to be!

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“In the time of lacking the Originality”

When a studio start to make a video game in the 80’s they didn’t face any complication; because choosing a new idea was easy due to every idea at that time was an original …

ideas like “Mario” a character that can prove for anyone that a video game series can’t be killed by the producer if he know how to create new ideas for it…

The same thing come to our mind when you think about MGS series where “Snake” represent a solider that does not care about anything for the sake of his mission, the always new story & the new technology makes the games fresh to its fans. The list goes on & on and if we need examples for the topic of originality we will need Documentary to talk about them all.

This time sure will not last forever & sure the lack of originality time will come – that’s if not already come -, a time where all producers seeking the customer’s bucket, a time need a savior to save this great industry from the falling in the trap of the boredom!

In times like this we need a new ideas, a new games & a new original ones, & fortunately it is there in the horizon; a game that will make you laugh at the first sight … a game will make every developer before gamers think about sharing ideas…
The game is “Little Big Planet” & its created studio is “Media Molecule”…

It is a very simple game that gives the capability to create a fantasy from nothing… the game concept is “Play, Create, Share” where every player can prove himself with an open world of unlimited ideas.

From looking at the first videos of the game every player will find something that will make him “think, play, challenge & create” … thinking about what the people at MM doing right now is something original where it’s look like “teacher & student where the teacher shows the student an airplane and make him think about how easy to make one… where if the student think logically it’s a hard thing to do but the way of presentation made everything easy”…

This is what I think people in MM doing by given the players list of levels ready to play then after enjoying it you will have a blank space where you can put anything you want from a tree & car to Monsters & flames … you will be even able to share it with friends by playing the level together & they can play it alone then leaving you comment to improve something…

The game become more interesting when you have an atmosphere of cartoony character that can become unique between every player and playing in a “full HD” world where you will see a lot of enjoyable things that will make you loves the game every time you play it…
This is the beauty of originality where making something for the first time is a Victory for the creator…

Watching the ideas people at MM thinking about never end with the idea of letting other developer enjoy the game like other players & create levels that look like the games that they love & create with sample tools…

This will make you someday join someone in a level created by developers like “David Jaffe” make levels that look God of War destruction universe or a designer like “Fumito Ueda” design a level will make as all remember the great ICO…

What did sites said about the game…

Finally, I hope developers take the path that MM choose & create original games that “really” we can enjoy playing them instead of repeating sequel…

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Guerilla’s flagship title Killzone 2, and Media Molecule’s quirky sandbox platformer LittleBigPlanet, have both been slated for a Septemeber release. Following September’s releases, Insomnaic’s Resistance 2 will be deploying in November, just in time for the holiday rush.

Although specific dates were not featured, this information is enough to get any gamer hot and bothered. Holiday season, here we come!

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A post on the studio’s website reads, “We’ve been slaving away pushing LittleBigPlanet towards the Alpha stage of its development cycle. Basically this means all the cool stuff we said will be in there should be playable, even if it isn’t pretty enough to release.

“The game seems to change every day at the moment and it is very exciting to be able to sit down and play what feels more and more like a complete experience.”

So when will we get to sit down and play it? September was the last we heard. In the meantime, there are plenty of previews, videos and screenshots on the gamepage.

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“Each game appears to be well positioned to resonate with the Japanese audience,” he said of the three titles.

He added, “…We think that LittleBigPlanet will be a console seller in Japan.”

The PS3 is currently lagging behind the Nintendo Wii in Japan. A new report from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain said that the less expensive Wii outsold the PS3 by more than four to one in Japan during the first fiscal half ending in September. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is performing well behind both consoles in the region.

LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation 3 is under development by UK-based Media Molecule, which was founded in 2006 by former Lionhead designer and Rag Doll Kung Fu developer Mark Healy. The game incorporates a charming yet technically impressive style, backed up with emergent gameplay and concepts taken from user-centric websites such as YouTube and MySpace.

The game is expected to release in early 2008 in the US.

The first and most game-structure-significant is the Pod. This is the handle being applied to your personal space ship - basically a glorified starting menu screen from which you can access several different modes; Play - pre-designed maps, Friends - your friends list and their creations; Messages - a basic messaging service integrated with your friends list; Creations - the do-it-yourself design mode; and Me - your personal character customisation menu.

‘Fluff’ is the key to unlocking all sorts of new items and customisation options. Looking a lot like faintly glowing marshmallows, Fluff is scattered in strings of five or more, sometimes hidden behind hard-to-reach areas. Collecting Fluff becomes an essential gameplay mechanic from the get-go. Without some sort of unlocking process, how could new items be unlocked, after all? It’s a bit of a worn concept, but by scattering Fluff in strange places around the level, it creates a compelling reason to experiment with the physics.

Racing! Woo! Just wait until the beta kicks off.

We also played a new level, ‘The English Garden’. This was, according to Technical Director Alex Evans, assembled neatly inside of a couple of hours by one of the designers especially for the show. Whether or not it makes it into the final game (and we wager it will, since Evans also mentioned that they’re aiming for “a whole bunch” of levels in the final release, The English Garden is a whole lot of fun.

Designed for two players, which is how we played, the level introduces cooperative skateboard racing - a case of both players standing on the starting grid in front of the skateboard deck - and then one player hopping onto it with X while the other player pulls the deck with R1 until it is over the starting hump. In a nut, any player can create a race in their course, creating conditions, jumps, hazards and whatever kinds of twisted opportunities for sick air they want, wrapping it up in a time limit that they think is fair. Then, this race can be competed on with your friends or anyone who downloads your course, competing for points and score-table glory.

The other big revelation is that LittleBigPlanet will feature VoIP and all the characters are actually lip-synched; when you talk, their adorable oversized gobs will babble away, which is always entertaining. This feature wasn’t demonstrated, but will apparently feature in the press conference. Beyond this, although Evans was non-commital on a release date, he did mention that there were plans for a slow roll-out of a public beta this year starting, jokingly, with his mother and expanding bit by bit from there. Sign us up, please.

The customisation continues to expand with the introduction of Fluff and accessories.

Also newly revealed to us was the ability to, in addition to using your own photos as background textures, being able to place 2D objects in the fore-, middle- and background. We were shown all manner of simple accessories, as they’ve been dubbed, that add just a smidge more to the gameplay, but go a long way towards making your creation look distinct. Flags, posts, bolts of fabric, rolls of cusions, stickers, decals, metal grates and numerous other simple accessories were shown.

It was also revealed that the game’s custom levels can be simply and automatically themed to suit your tastes. We saw two different themes, adjusting the basic background texture and object sets to suit - the Japanese Garden looked much as you’d imagine it - pagoda-style stonework, mossy paths, cloudy sky and so on. The Pier theme was all about worn wood plank floors, rusty bolts and old stonework. We’re guessing there are another six or so themes built in at least.

On the subject of downloadable content, the team at Media Molecule have already got big plans for all sorts of items, themes and more. They wouldn’t go into specifics as yet, but this is clearly the sort of game that would greatly benefit from as much fresh content as possible, as often as feasible.

Apart from all of this, the game is looking and playing as well as it did at E3. We’re confident that this is going to be one of the key releases of early 2008, when we expect it to finally ship. Stay tuned for more coverage from the Tokyo Game Show floor in the coming hours and days.

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